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Officers, applicants commend Ikoyi Immigration passport boss

By Odita Sunday
21 October 2018   |   2:01 pm
It was accolades galore last week for the Ikoyi Immigration office boss, Manir Yari for his customer-friendly attitudes and reduction in waiting time for passport delivery. It now takes less than 3 days for an applicant without issues in his or her file to procure an International passport. In the past, a large number of…

It was accolades galore last week for the Ikoyi Immigration office boss, Manir Yari for his customer-friendly attitudes and reduction in waiting time for passport delivery.

It now takes less than 3 days for an applicant without issues in his or her file to procure an International passport.

In the past, a large number of persons would be seen clustering around the Passport Control Officers’ (PCO’s) office. But the reverse is now the case due to the ingenuity of the PCO and his boss, Muhammad Babandede.

Yari has won the heart of many applicants and bagged the wrath of a few Immigration elements whose stock in trade is to extort passport customers through delay tactics in procuring a passport.

A group of journalists who were at Ikoyi to renew their international passports spoke with few officers and applicants on the new wind of change in the passport office.

“Upon assumption of office some of the challenges he met on the ground was a backlog of files, which had been lying unattended to for several months,” an officer said under condition of anonymity.

It also was gathered that some of the challenges faced by the immigration unit were not limited to an epileptic power supply, influx of touts and extortionists and poor channels of tackling complaints.

“One of the major challenges, however, was the epileptic power supply. In the past, the office had no electricity at all as the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) had cut off the light for several months, leaving them at the mercy of only generators.

The source said: “Also, with the backlog of unattended files, there was a lot of pressure coming from all cadres of the society for the production of their long-awaited passport applications”.

It was gathered that this led to massive condemnation from the media, which certainly created an embarrassing image for the Immigration service.

The Guardian learnt that the situation was exacerbated by the lack of an effective mechanism for handling complaints from customers.

Checks also revealed that the lull in production saw the boot of touts, who set about exploiting the situation by extorting money from the applicants.

“The unit, however, has experienced some reformation with the assumption of office of the incumbent Passport Control Officer (PCO), Manir Yari, a Deputy Comptroller of Immigration (DCI).

Expressing joy at the ongoing reformatory process, the unit was undergoing, a female senior officer who serves in one of the offices said they have been receiving several commendations from numerous applicants.

She said: “We are very happy about the reforms we carried out. We introduced some reforms for the clearance of backlogs, such as constant supply of booklets from our headquarters in Abuja.

“Addressing electricity problem by the service, 24 hours operations in the production unit, Saturday operations by the issuance/ collection unit to enable a large number of applicants to collect their passports on non-working days, so as to reduce crowd on working days.

“Setting up performance target for the units and individual officers of the units and putting a time frame for the clearance of the backlogs.”

Further additional reforms carried out for both sustainability of operations and comfort of the applicants include total clearance of backlogs and waiting for files after capturing, availability of booklets, sensitisation of the entire workforce.

They also include morning enlightenment briefing carried out by the Public Relations Officer to all applicants present, transparent process that is a cashless system, processing of passports through the use of POS, which has created a window for passport applicants to explore for the ease of doing business.

“The cashless policy has also helped in edging out of tout and touting and has also ensured that there is no delay in the production process, even without knowing anybody.

“We are giving credit for the success of the reforms to the Comptroller General of Immigration (CGI), Muhammad Babandede.

An Immigration officer said the immigration boss has taken measures to ensure the consistent supply of passport booklets.

“It was in line with this that the CGI officially launched the use of POS platform in Ikoyi on July 2018, for passport fee payment”. She added.

Already, the introduction of a passport with 10 years validity, which was one of the promises made by the CGI would soon take off.

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